PREMISE
A hapless family man turns his life upside down when millions of strangers suddenly start seeing him in their dreams. When his nighttime appearances take a nightmarish turn, Paul is forced to navigate his newfound stardom.
THE GOOD STUFF
CAGE- Nicolas Cage has done a lot in the business. I mean a whole lot. He’s an absolute legend who has so many memorable performances in great movies that it may seem kind of leaning towards recency bias to say that something is a top 10 performance that HE has ever done….it may sound a bit ridiculous. What I can say for sure is that amidst what has to be over 100 credits by now, this is in the top 5% percentile of Nicolas Cage’s performances. Every zany idiosyncrasy that he’s been made fun of for the past decade adds strength to his performance in this film. And, of course, when stuff gets heavy and dramatic, he’s more than capable of sticking the landing in that department. He always has been.
SCRIPT VERITILITY- Dream scenario is almost like two different movies melded together. The first half is an absolute black comedy. The absurd premise, combined with these absolutely insane dream sequences that people have of Cage’s character, do provide a lot of laughs and they’re all creatively done. The second half of this movie is a very heavy set, yet still quirky dramatic film. It does manage to hold both ends relatively well and admirably so.
THE BAD STUFF
THE WIFEY SUBPLOT- Not that Julianne Nicholson isn’t holding her own here, she’s been underrated for a very long time and I have nothing to complain about regarding her performance. However, amidst the many different topics this movie tries to cover in detail, there is the issue of cancel culture that they try to convey through Nicholson’s character. Though I think what they have to say about cancel culture does have relevancy, the ludicrousness of being canceled for the situation that Nicolas Cage’s character is canceled for… Is a bit of a stretch. I get it, satire and all that, but still I don’t necessarily feel that the story needed to go down this route.
THE UGLY STUFF
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As the good modern-day Nicolas Cage movies tend to do (like renfield, joe, mandy, and the unbearable weight of massive talent) this is a movie where you go and expecting one thing, getting that one thing executed very well, and then getting other small delightful things to go along with the one thing you were looking for.
Cage is the perfect man to anchor such a strange story like this. Perhaps any other straight-laced actor wouldn’t have provided nearly as much weirdness and awkwardness as needed for this to be what it is. Dream scenario is very smart, and gets a lot done with not as much running time as many other films tend to have. If you are a Cage fan, this is going to make you very happy.
DREAM SCENARIO is in theaters now
